


who says you can't go home?

by steepair



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Natasha Feels, Natasha Finds A Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-17
Updated: 2017-05-17
Packaged: 2018-11-01 16:41:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10925841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/steepair/pseuds/steepair
Summary: Natasha isn't looking for a family, but one finds her anyway.





	who says you can't go home?

Clint Barton is sent to kill the infamous assassin known as the Black Widow, and instead he finds a barely out of her teens waif named Natalia Romanova, and _honestly, what the fuck, Nick_? But Nick just shrugs, knowing if anyone would disobey orders and find the humanity in a made-man monster, it would be Clint Barton, and if that works out to everyone’s advantage, especially to the little monster girl’s benefit, then that suits him just fine, but he certainly hadn’t planned it that way, no, sir. Of course, it’s not as easy as a “Welcome to SHIELD” orientation tour and handing out a badge and top level security clearance. Natasha, that’s what she’s going by now, please, has got a lot of shit to work through before anyone will leave her in a room without armed supervision, let alone put a gun in her hand.

Clint might have seen good in her and trusted her enough to bring her in, but he keeps some level of professional distance. He’s not about to trust her with anything personal, certainly not his family, not until he’s sure she’s stable and in control of her actions, has been thoroughly deprogrammed, is fit for duty, and has shown her reliability and commitment in the field. He leaves the deconditioning and resocialization to the professionals, but he visits on the regular, giving his support.

After she’s cleared for duty, she proves herself to him quickly. She's dependable, efficient, trustworthy, all the things you need in a partner. She regularly cracks his ass up with her wicked sense of humor and, most important of all (or so he's been told), calls him out on his shit. For all her darkness and damage, there's an inherent  _goodness_ in her, a compassion that survived in the worst conditions, finally given a chance to thrive. He couldn't imagine making a different call.

He eventually makes a decision to tell her about his family, something only a select few know about, and he sees a storm of emotion in her eyes. Caution, confusion, gratitude. Wonder. That he would trust her with something so precious. She promises his secret is safe with her and that nothing will happen to his family on her watch. If possible, she becomes even more diligent in making sure he gets out of missions alive and unharmed.

A year or two in, she’s saved his ass so many times, and he thinks it’s time to show her what it means, what she’s making sure he goes home to. He figures it would do her some good since, understatement of the year, she isn’t exactly the most well-adjusted person he’s met. Which is saying something, because most of his interactions are with people who work for a top secret government security organization (in other words, a breeding ground for dysfunction), and a lot of them think _he's_ the crazy one. What does that say about Natasha, who still subtly tests her food for poison every time she eats in the SHIELD cafeteria? He guesses it says a lot, because many of the agents and staff still tread carefully around her. She's got a reputation, and it suits her purposes in her work, but it can't be beneficial to her personal life or mental health. He wants her to see that her life doesn’t have to only be about the next mission. And she could use a few more people in her corner, especially people that aren’t paranoid secret agents.

He doesn’t spring it on her, because he knows she wouldn't find that to be the good kind of surprise, mostly because she doesn't find any surprises to be the good kind. He keeps making invitations she won’t accept, but he finally gets her after she’s been injured. He talks with her doctors, and they give her the choice to either stay in the medbay for another few days or to leave under his care. He knows it isn’t exactly a fair choice, she hates medical, and it still takes a lot of convincing, but he’ll take what he can get.

* * *

After spending a week in medical, Natasha is more than ready to take any opportunity to leave, even if it means finally giving in to Clint's incessant pestering. She regrets it the moment she limps through the door of a cozy farmhouse. Clint is at her side, more relaxed and content than she's ever seen him, and she's greeted by a gentle looking woman with a kind smile and a toddler tucked in her arms, and she is terrified. Clint, she thinks, is the biggest idiot of all for letting her anywhere near his family, and this Laura must be so utterly naive to trust his fool’s judgement. Don’t they know she will hurt them?

It’s easy to turn the recriminations towards them: what kind of parents would let her into their home, near their child? How could they do that knowing what she was capable of? How could they be so irresponsible? There’s paranoia too: it’s a trap, they must want something from her, Clint isn’t who she thought he was, SHIELD isn’t what she thought it was. It passes, she knows this is real, couldn’t possibly be some conspiracy, but she remains on edge. She knows they aren’t to blame.

They aren’t the problem. She is.

The Bartons are nothing but jovial and attentive. Cooper becomes less shy and more curious, Laura keeps the conversation flowing, and Clint is all smiles having his favorite people together. They eat meatloaf and vegetables fresh from the garden, and it is the first home-cooked meal Natasha can remember having. Clint puts Cooper to bed, and then they sit on the front porch after dinner, chatting and drinking beer and watching the sun set. It’s all very domestic.

Natasha retires early, claiming exhaustion from the drive and her injuries. She doesn’t sleep that night. Instead, she lays awake in the guest bedroom wishing she had handcuffs. She thought she’d grown out of it, this safety blanket. But it’s a different feeling driving it now, it’s not about making her feel safe, it’s about feeling like others are safe from her. So she fashions a restraint with the lamp cord to tie herself to the headboard, though she knows it can’t stop her from walking into Cooper’s room and smothering him. If they only knew what was in her head, the sick, violent thoughts that flashed through her mind, they wouldn’t be smiling at her across the dinner table. They wouldn’t want her there, wouldn’t allow her near anyone’s children. They would lock her away or put her down like she deserves.

And yet, Clint always invites her back, and Laura always smiles at her, and Cooper always tugs on her hand to come play. And she can’t help but find herself wanting to go back, wanting to be surrounded by the comfort and support and love in this family.

* * *

Natasha thinks Laura Barton is open and kind and generous, and she is right, but Laura is not naive. As much as she trusts Clint and Nick’s instincts and intuition, she would never let an infamous assassin into her home and near her child without making up her own mind first. She wasn't pleased to learn that her husband risked his career, his freedom, and possibly his life to bring in a fearful feral stray, but that’s also the kind of reckless compassion that made her fall in love with him. Clint tells her stories of his mission misadventures with his new partner, and she likes what she hears, finding herself respecting and admiring this woman she hasn’t met but that looms so large in her life. It helps that she’s saved Clint’s finely sculpted ass on numerous occasions, sometimes quite literally. Laura is very fond of that ass and would like to keep him around for a while longer. Natasha may not know it, but she earns herself brownie points with Laura long before they meet.

When they finally come face to face, Laura doesn’t find a callous monster or a spitting animal or even an irreparably broken human, just a guarded but vulnerable young woman trying to find herself after escaping a very cruel life. She doesn’t know the specifics of Natasha’s past, Clint hasn’t shared much out of respect for her privacy, and he doesn’t know everything either. But Laura knows enough, and she is sympathetic and happy to play a part in helping her, not out of pity and not just because it’s important to Clint, but because she grows to love Natasha for Natasha, her humor and intelligence and tenacity and her decency and goodness in the face of overwhelming odds, and she wants her to find some peace of mind. Maybe she doesn’t know all of who Natasha is, maybe Natasha doesn’t know all of who she is either, but Laura is glad to help her find out.

Clint says Laura has a way with her, and he marvels at how effortless it seems. For Laura, there’s nothing effortless about it. She’s helped care for the strays Clint’s brought home before, for Clint the stray himself, but this isn’t the same. Natasha in her natural state, or the closest thing to it, feels deadly in a way Clint never has. Laura never feels threatened, never thinks Natasha will hurt her or her family, but her presence can sometimes be unnerving and strange, no matter what mask she’s wearing. She feels guilty when the thought crosses her mind, that there’s something unnatural or robotic about her friend.

Most of all, it’s Natasha’s vulnerability and humanity that unnerves Laura, because she knows that’s where she can cause the most harm. She wants to help, but she isn’t a professional. She knows she makes the wrong move sometimes, crosses a line and drives Natasha away. It can be exhausting. It’s not that she feels as though she has to walk on eggshells around her, and she thinks she’s getting better at recognizing the fault lines and cracks, but she doesn’t want to make it worse. Is she causing more harm than good? Is it clear she’s acting out of empathy and love rather than pity? What if she’s giving off the impression that Natasha is some kind of fix-it project to her? Clint tells her Natasha is so much more at ease at the farmhouse, and she keeps coming back to them, so Laura can only hope she’s doing something right.

* * *

Natasha is uncomfortable around Laura at first. Though she does it quietly and seemingly without judgement, Laura is perceptive and shrewd and has a talent for reading people’s moods and anticipating their needs sometimes even before they realize what they need themselves. This seems to include Natasha, and it makes her uncomfortable, makes her feel like she’s failing. Has she really become such an open book? People shouldn’t be able to read her, but suddenly the list is growing: Clint, Nick, Laura. Sloppiness was always punished where she came from, and for good reason. It could get her and other people killed. The always creeping but no longer strangling paranoia in her questions if it’s part of a long con, an effort to lower her guard, but the rational part of her knows it’s ridiculous to think she’s worth so much effort. Perhaps this is just what it’s like to be surrounded by good people, to feel no need to hide anything because good people don’t take advantage of your vulnerabilities.

Natasha knows Laura can read when she’s faking, putting up a mask or relying on a previous cover to interact and socialize rather than just being herself. It comes to her naturally, like sliding into a well-worn jacket, and it’s disconcerting, the way Laura can recognize how something has changed sometimes before Natasha realizes she’s slipping. But it’s worse when Natasha trips into memories that couldn’t possibly be hers. During one dinner, as they laugh over stories of Laura’s Nana and her never-ending supply of pocket horehounds, Natasha finds herself wistfully describing the comfort of her grandmother’s cocoa on crisp winter days. While cleaning up, Laura takes her hand and says, “you know you can be yourself with us, right?” After the dishes are dried, Natasha walks out and doesn't come back until she's sure she never had a grandmother.

Laura doesn't say a word about the slipping again, goes along with the change or a story that doesn’t quite fit, but her brow furrows and expression darkens in concern. A small, strange part of Natasha almost worries she’s disappointing Laura when she reverts like that, and she wishes she could do better for her. But she doesn’t know how to tell her that it isn’t on purpose, that she isn’t trying to hide herself from Laura, she just isn’t sure who the real her is.

Laura reads her in other ways. Natasha often hesitates at simple questions, the kind that involve making a choice or having a preference. She could tell you Nadine Roman’s favorite color or Anastasia Shostakova’s cocktail of choice, but Natasha, just Natasha, has only begun to learn her likes and dislikes. Just Natasha has very little practice making choices for herself, and she sometimes finds herself overwhelmed. Laura seems to instinctually recognize this and changes her approach, moving away from open ended questions towards more direct, focused ones. “What would you like to drink?” becomes “would you like orange juice or milk with breakfast?” It’s a subtle shift, but Natasha sees what she’s doing and is grateful even through her embarrassment. A grown woman, she knows, should be able to decide what she wants for breakfast without hand holding, but it relieves some of her anxiety. Laura allows her to make an active choice without paralyzing her with options. Natasha learns that she prefers her orange juice with so much pulp it might as well still be surrounded by the peel and that she does not like nuts in baked goods.

Laura can also see that Natasha has no understanding of the meaning of downtime. She shakes her head, sighs as she finds Natasha sharpening knives at the dining room table, muttering that she’s worse than Clint and “at least he has his house projects to distract himself, as much as it drives me up the wall, assuming there’ll be any walls left when he’s done” and “c’mon, let’s get you to work” as she takes her outside and gives her tasks. The farm only produces enough to feed the family and barter with the folks in town, but it’s still a big job, and Laura says she'll gladly take another hand where she can get it. So she teaches Natasha how to fix the tractor and plant vegetables and milk the cow and feed the pigs and chickens. It helps ease some of Natasha’s restless tension, and Laura has more free time to work on her writing.

Laura’s there on the worst days too. When Natasha is laid out on the bathroom floor, shivering and feverish and nauseous, trying to remember things they clearly don’t want her to remember, it’s Laura that finds her, strokes her hair, keeps her grounded, as she struggles to distinguish who and where she is. When Natasha wakes up screaming at night, Laura doesn’t say a word about it in the morning, only asks if she’s ever painted before and would she like to try.

One day, Laura calls her a sister and were she not so well-trained, Natasha might have flinched. Natasha had sisters once, of a sort, but they were as much competition as a comfort, locked as they were into deadly rivalry. She’s laid awake at night waiting for a sister to slip her cuffs and stick a knife between her ribs. She’s killed her sisters, felt their bones break under her hand, washed their blood off her skin. But Laura doesn’t know that. Natasha thinks maybe she should, then they could both stop pretending. So she tells her, anticipating disgust and fear, but Laura only offers her love and understanding and a quiet fury towards the people who hurt her.

* * *

The Barton family grows a little bigger as the years go by. Natasha has a special bond with Cooper, because he’s there through it all, from the start when she’s at her worst, even if he doesn’t remember it. He helps her learn that she can be trusted with more than she ever thought she should. That she’s safe enough to hold a child. That she’s gentle enough and good enough and human enough for a child to love. For Cooper, Auntie Nat’s been his auntie for as long as he knows, reading him bed time stories and sneaking him sweets and being his trusty sidekick on adventures to save dragons and, when he gets a little older, geeking out over Minecraft with him and teaching him to code and even showing him some cool spy tricks that he’s tried at school to rousing success but to less success at home because his mom has the mom superpower of omniscience.

Natasha’s there for Lila Nicole Barton’s birth when Clint can’t be, off on a mission he can’t be pulled out of. Instead of her husband, Laura gets her other two favorite spies, alternatively pacing the room and holding her hand in nervous excitement. Laura tells her, ”this one is for Nick, but you’ll get the next one,” and Natasha scoffs and mutters something about pain-induced delirium, and she’ll never admit that her heart stutters at the thought. It’s different with Lila than it was with Coop when he was that young, because Natasha’s more settled in her new life and isn’t in the middle of growing pains and an identity crisis, and because Lila adores her from the moment her eyes open, and the feeling is mutual. For Lila, Auntie Nat gives warm hugs and scares the monsters away, she brings her pretty trinkets from around the world, and she jumps in the pond and catches frogs with her and holds her tight when they watch Disney movies, and if she’s too sad and quiet when they watch Lilo and Stitch again, Lila knows a sloppy kiss on the cheek will brighten her up.

It becomes both easier and harder for Natasha to be around the kids as they grow older. Easier, because she is more comfortable in her skin and more trusting of herself. Harder, because they reach the age she was while in the Red Room. Hardest with Lila, because sometimes when she looks at this innocent child, all she can think about are the ways people take little girls and use them and break them. She desperately wants to protect these children, but she sometimes has to stop herself because her threats aren’t their threats. The things that would have hurt her in the program, that would have gotten her punished, the weaknesses and vulnerabilities and imperfections, are just normal childhood things, and it’s something they’re allowed. It’s okay to let them cry and laugh and be loud and make mistakes and take up space and just be.

What the Room did to her was not okay, and she’s still struggling to break those habits. She wants to be better, and she’s trying, sometimes failing, and that’s allowed too, isn’t weakness. It’s strength. Or at least that’s what Laura tells her when she finds her curled up behind the tractor after she snapped at Lila for crying over a scrapped knee. Laura sits with her until she’s ready to go back in, holds her hand as they walk to the house. Clint smiles and puts a cup of tea in her hands. When she apologizes to Lila, the girl sniffs, hugs her, and refuses to be extracted from her lap for the rest of the night.

* * *

This is the feeling Madame meant, the feeling that could make an operative lose sight of obedience and duty. The feeling they thought they could cut out of her. The feeling they tried to erase by replacing it with guns and knives and calloused hands and the broken bodies of little girls at her feet. It’s love.

She still struggles with it sometimes, with the idea that she deserves it, even as she’s surrounded by love. After the Battle of New York, Natasha brings Clint back home to his family safe, though not entirely sound, and then she keeps her distance, not wanting to intrude on their healing. Laura is fed up with it, and that Christmas, she won’t take no for an answer. Natasha finds herself sitting by a tree with two kids clinging to her arms and tears in her eyes and an arrow around her neck, because arrows are a Barton family tradition, and when will she finally get it through her thick skull that she couldn’t possibly intrude on their family when she’s part of it?

Some days, Natasha thinks she’s more than earned a little peace, and she’s confident about who she is and her place in the world. The Barton family is her greatest comfort, and on good nights, she dreams of them smiling and laughing. Other days, she doubts she can ever be more than what she was manufactured for, and she wonders how anyone can love her when she was not made to be loved. The Barton family is her greatest fear, and on bad nights, she dreams of the farm burning and their screams as she lights the match.

But whatever kind of day she’s having, the Bartons are there, waiting for her, loving her, even when she’s not sure she deserves it. When Clint puts his arm around her shoulder and she has to slip away before it turns into a noogie, when she’s laughing with Laura as they run through the rain and mud after an escaped chicken, when Coop gives her a big wet kiss on the cheek even after she handily beats him at Mario Kart, when Lila creeps into her room after being put to bed because she has to tell her one more fact about butterflies before she can fall asleep, or when Nate blows spit bubbles at her and giggles. Those are good days, and they make the bad days better.

**Author's Note:**

> I'd say somebody give Natasha a hug, but the Bartons have that covered. 
> 
> This started as a flailing meta and then morphed into a fic thing, and I think my tenses got away from me. Anyway, hit me up on Tumblr at thedancingcow if you too have overwhelming feelings about Natasha.


End file.
